Contemporary Personalities
credit—to the band of "spell-binders" who \ the doors of promotion by tempestuous ] rhetoric. And yet, as we have seen, he has with distinction many, almost most, of the offices of State.
His career has exhibited many strange incalculable vicissitudes. When I first entered I ment in 1906 he was, on the whole, one of the unpopular Ministers in the eyes of the rank ar. of the Conservative Party. His manner was pi attorney-like and irritating. And in the eyes oJ who did not know how much charm and genial: possessed in private life, he seemed jejune in hi: ceptions ; and rather petty in their present; An occasion is still recalled on which he annot at a moment when political feeling was mucl bittered over the Welsh Church controversy, he evidently believed to be a brilliant—and was, in fact, a considerable—concession. "' in a position," he said, " to reassure those wh lieve that it is not our intention to act genero I am prepared to meet them in the matter by ing them 6s. 8d." The ambiguity of this anno ment, and the paltry county court atmosphere ^ has long surrounded this particular sum, produ degree of laughter and ridicule which I do not that even up to the present day Mr. McKenn; completely understood.
The first change in the view which the Party as a whole took of Mr. McKenna was ol able when he became First Lord of the Admi: I remember the late Lord Fisher, who liked his po] " chiefs "—if in such a connection the noun be allowed—to be combative in the warfai